[Footnote 1:  The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.  The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this island.]

The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together.  In the wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.

To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.  In this shallow water—­the “Banks” of Newfoundland—­fish, especially codfish, swarmed in millions, and still continue to swarm with little, if any, diminution from the constant toll of the fishing fleets.  Another creature found in great abundance on these coasts is the true lobster,[2] which filled as important a part in the diet of the Beothuk natives, before the European occupation, as the salmon did in the dietary of the British Columbian tribes.

[Footnote 2:  Homarus americanus.  The lobster of Newfoundland and the coasts of North-east America is closely related to the common lobster of British waters.  These true lobsters resemble the freshwater crayfish in having their foremost pair of legs modified into large, unequal-sized claws.  The European rock-lobster of the Mediterranean and French coasts (the langouste of the French) has no large claws.]

The next most striking feature in the geography of Eastern North America is NOVA SCOTIA.  AS you look at it on the map this province seems to be a long peninsula connected with the mainland by the narrow isthmus of Chignecto; but its northernmost portion—­Cape Breton—­really consists of two big and two little islands, only separated from Nova Scotia by a very narrow strait—­the Gut of Canso.  On the north of Nova Scotia lies the large Prince Edward Island, and north of this again the small group of the Magdalen Islands, discovered by Cartier, the resort of herds of immense walruses at one time.  Due west of Nova Scotia the country, first flat (like Nova Scotia itself) and at one time covered with magnificent forests, rises into a very hilly region which culminates on the north in the Shikshok Mountains of the Gaspe Peninsula (nearly 4000 feet in height) and the White Mountains (over 6000 feet) and the Adirondak Mountains (over 5000 feet).  The White, the Green, and the Adirondak Mountains lie just within the limits of the United States.

North of the Gaspe Peninsula, in the great Gulf of St. Lawrence, is Anticosti Island, which rises on the south in a series of terraces until it reaches an altitude of about 2000 feet.  This island, which is well wooded, was said to have swarmed with reindeer at one time, and perhaps other forms of deer also, and to have possessed grizzly bears which fed on the deer, besides Polar bears visiting it in the winter.